David Rumsey
David Rumsey • Illustration — David Rumsey at the 2005 Where 2.0 Conference • Illustration — David Rumsey giving a guided tour of his collection. David Rumsey (born 1944) is an American map collector and the founder of the David Rumsey Map Collection. He is also the president of Cartography Associates.
David Rumsey
Wikimedia Commons · CC BY 2.0
- Born
- 1944
- Nationality
- United States
- Occupation
- lecturer · collector · philanthropist · librarian · cartographer
- Fields
- collecting · map · atlas · globe
- Education
- Yale University
- Languages
- English
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
David Rumsey • Illustration — David Rumsey at the 2005 Where 2.0 Conference • Illustration — David Rumsey giving a guided tour of his collection. David Rumsey (born 1944) is an American map collector and the founder of the David Rumsey Map Collection. He is also the president of Cartography Associates.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Note VALÉORINE
David Rumsey (born 1944) is a cartographer, collector and lecturer, among other activities, of American nationality.
The cartographer was educated at Yale University. David Rumsey is a member of California Map Society. Activity centred on atlas, collecting and globe. Languages used include English.
Composed from admitted, traceable facts · 26 September 2026
VALÉORINE
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for David Rumsey. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q5239292 · wikipedia · David Rumsey
In this article
Education and research
Education and research
In 2023, he starred in the documentary A Stranger Quest by the Italian director Andrea Gatopoulos, presented at Torino Film Festival.
Rumsey has a bachelor of arts and a master of fine arts from Yale University. Rumsey was a founding member of Yale Research Associates in the Arts (also known as PULSA), a group of artists working with electronic technologies. He was also a 1966 initiate into the Skull and Bones Society, before becoming associate director of the American Society for Eastern Arts in San Francisco.
Real estate and finance career
Real estate and finance career
Later, he entered a 20-year career in real estate development and finance during which he had a long association with Charles Feeney's General Atlantic Holding Company of New York and served as president and director of several of its real estate subsidiaries; General Atlantic eventually became the Atlantic Philanthropies, a Bermuda-based philanthropic foundation that is one of the world's largest charities.
Art lecturer
Rumsey was a lecturer in art at the Yale School of Art for several years. He has lectured widely regarding his online library work, including talks at the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, Digital Library Federation, Stanford University, Harvard University, Where 2.0, O'Reilly Open Source Convention, and at conferences in Hong Kong, Mexico, Japan, the United Kingdom, and Germany.
Awards, associations and books
For making his map collection public, Rumsey was given an honors award in 2002 by Special Libraries Association. The website, developed in conjunction with Luna Imaging and TechEmpower, won the Webby Award for Technical Achievement in 2002. On May 18, 2012, Rumsey received the Warren R. Howell Award from the Stanford University Libraries in recognition of his service to Stanford. As of January 2008, following are some of the institutions where Rumsey serves as a board member: • John Carter Brown Library • Internet Archive • Samuel H. Kress Foundation • Stanford University Library Advisory Board • Yale Library Associates (as a trustee) • The Long Now Foundation • Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) • American Antiquarian Society He is the author of the following books: • Cartographica Extraordinaire: The Historical Map Transformed - with Edith M. Punt - • "Historical Maps in GIS" - with Meredith Williams, a chapter in Past Time, Past Place: GIS for History -
Collection
From the early 1980s, Rumsey has collected more than 150,000 maps dating from the 16th to the 21st century that feature areas from around the world. The collection includes separate maps, atlases, globes, school geographies, books of travel and exploration, and maritime charts. The collection is available on his website for free viewing. The entire collection has been gifted to the David Rumsey Map Center that opened on April 19, 2016, in the Bing Wing of Green Library, Stanford University. The center houses most of Rumsey's collection, including maps and atlases and interactive, high-resolution screens for viewing digital cartography. The davidrumsey.com website continues as a separate public resource.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1."Rumsey, David, 1944-", Library of Congress Name Authority File.
- 2.Torino Film Festival. A Stranger Quest.
- 3.Millegan, Kris. The Skeleton Crew". Fleshing Out Skull and Bones: Investigations into America's Most Powerful Secret Society. Trine Day. 597–690. 2003. 0-9720207-2-1.
- 4.University, © Stanford. David Rumsey Map Center. Stanford Libraries.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
People, houses and institutions
Knowledge graph
People, houses and institutions
Teachers, collaborators, publishers and institutions recorded against this person, each on a stated basis.
Studied at
1- Yale UniversityOrganisation
Established from a fact already recorded on a verified source.
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 16 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Maps and atlases
1,180 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- David de MeyneAuthor
- David Ewen BartholomewAuthor
- David FabriciusAuthor
- David H. BurrAuthor
- David ThompsonAuthor
- David WoodwardAuthor
- Dénes LukácsAuthor
- Denis of the NativityAuthor
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by David Rumsey?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.